The separator between the comment pane and the story pane is moveable. Drag it up or down if you need more room to read on the screen.
From: Katie McN
Re: Denver Gwen (part 2), by Poison Ivan
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 19:04:23 GMT
Hi Jeff Zephyr <[email protected]>,
On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 12:30:13 -0600 I noticed your interesting post:
On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 08:33:06 -0500, "Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote:
[ ... ]
"I've never felt so much love. I loved being with you and Neil."
I smiled. "It was different. That's a good thing. You shouldn't live your life doing the same things over and over again."
"But there are some things I wouldn't mind doing over and over again."
Every story needs something special to hang it all on. I think that this last line says it all. We don't know if Sam and Neil found something together, but they had their own over and over things they did, didn't they?
I'd like to see a story where the two guys find that they are gay and . . .
It's Me! Katie McN
<[email protected]>
Read My Stories at:
www.katie-mcn.com
From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: Denver Gwen (part 2), by Poison Ivan
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 19:33:44 -0600
On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 19:04:23 GMT, Katie McN <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Jeff Zephyr <[email protected]>,
On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 12:30:13 -0600 I noticed your interesting post:
On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 08:33:06 -0500, "Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote:
[ ... ]
"I've never felt so much love. I loved being with you and Neil."
I smiled. "It was different. That's a good thing. You shouldn't live your life doing the same things over and over again."
"But there are some things I wouldn't mind doing over and over again."
Every story needs something special to hang it all on. I think that this last line says it all. We don't know if Sam and Neil found something together, but they had their own over and over things they did, didn't they?
I'd like to see a story where the two guys find that they are gay and . . .
They did seem to miss out on some of the possibilities in their nice threesome. Some guys don't know when they've found the perfect partner, that's all :-)
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.
From: Katie McN
Re: Denver Gwen (part 2), by Poison Ivan
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 18:49:50 GMT
Hi Poison Ivan and "Desdmona" <[email protected]>,
On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 08:33:06 -0500 I noticed your interesting post:
The following submission to the FishTank is not the complete story. This is part two of a two-part story. Part one may be found here:
The author's comments:
"As with last week, I'm interested in where the story bogs down and where it skips ahead too fast. And now that you've read the entire thing, I'd be interested to hear what you think of the plot."
FishTank guidelines apply, but the author does not want your comments limited by them.
1) 2 positive comments
2) 2 suggestions for improvement
3) Try not to repeat!
The FishTank can be found at:
http://www.asstr.org/~Desdmona/FishTank
Questions? Suggestions? Submissions? Concerns? Direct them to: [email protected] or [email protected].
***********************************
"Denver Gwen" part 2 (MF MMF oral anal) By Poison Ivan [email protected]
Once again, Ivan, I'll take a shot at the two and two and then try to respond to your requests.
While it may not be obvious to everyone, you took on a challenging story concept that could have easily put people to sleep and made it interesting and exciting. MF sex, polyamory and guy oriented sex fantasies are not topics that I care about much, but your story and the way you presented the material kept me reading with interest. Your main two characters were believable and easy for me to see in my mind as I read about their adventures. The locale was easy to envision as well, and your writing techniques added a lot of value making the whole much better than any of the parts.
In addition, you display exceptional technical writing talent as you keep track of the interactions of quite a few characters without imposing yourself on the story to do this. As I mentioned last week, your ability to have a number of people talking at the same time without confusing the reader is wonderful. You also present a variety of diverse story concepts and yet I didn't have problems keeping track of the various story elements. I consider this to be a major strength of this story and of you as a writer.
My first improvement suggestion might be a case of me not caring for the subject matter and it would seem that guys who are into no consequences, MF, polyamory might not react as I do. I feel that the story gets too "preachy" from time to time almost as if you are making sure the reader understands what you're trying to convey. Here is an example from Gwen:
"We can make it work. You know we can, Sam. Something Neil has showed me. Words, they are just words. There are words that seem like insults, but they aren't really. They are just random syllables. They only have the meaning we give them.
"And I know what I am now, Sam. Neil has showed me who I really am. I am a slut. But I'm not a slut in the insulting way. No, the word itself is not an insult. It is just a word with a definition. I am a slut, but that is not bad. Do you understand what I mean, Sam? Maybe I should get Neil back in here and he can explain it better."
Your dialog in other places is so realistic and here I feel that the character has stepped up on a soap box and is speaking directly from the author's brain to the reader. My picture of her doesn't allow for a soliloquy like this to show up in the story. As an aside, I think that "There are words ... " would read better if it was written, "They are words ... "
I also find the repetition of her sex demands such as this and many other repetitions of the theme:
"I need to be fucked," Gwen panted. "I am a woman who needs a lot of dicks fucking me."
to be tedious and somewhat unrealistic. If I was writing the story, one of the guys would have said, "Shut the fuck up" early on as she continued to say she was a slut (which is a term that is a turn off to me and many other women so it might diminish our interest in a character who would say that about herself several times), and as she demanded cock over and over again. I agree with Sam when he said this:
'"Gwen is acting a little weird, Neil. Be careful."'
and this:
'From a purely selfish point of view, it was a relief to get away from Gwen. I was sure Neil would be able to deal with her a lot better than I, and Christy was a lot closer to traveling within my orbit. Besides, our earlier fuck had ended much too quickly. I was eager to go again.'
The second suggestion is more specific. I think the sex scene that begins with this line:
'Her flesh seemed to be everywhere, her thighs, her fleshy cunt lips.'
The above starts a long narrative of a sex scene. I don't know what to make of that sentence, but it feels incomplete and using the phrase '. . . fleshy cunt lips." seems to me a poor choice of words to use to start a sex scene. Maybe it's just me, but those words are a turn off and I wish they'd been something more romantic.
It would seem that the narration of the scene could use some dialog interspersed through out. This should be easy for you to do since you're so good at dialog. The way it is written comes across to me as an obligatory sex scene that you throw in to get it out of the way in order to get on with your story. Once again, this might just be me because the described sex is not interesting to me for reasons mentioned earlier.
The author's comments:
"As with last week, I'm interested in where the story bogs down and where it skips ahead too fast. And now that you've read the entire thing, I'd be interested to hear what you think of the plot."
I mentioned earlier that this section had parts that seems to reveal the author too much. I think the Gwen 'slut' thing and her 'cock' thing are way over-done and detract from the story. The reader either gets it or not. The repetition makes the story drag and I found myself saying "Get on with it, Ivan" more than once. Personally, I feel this half of the story is too long and drawn out. Getting rid of the second and subsequent repetitions of the 'slut' and 'cock' stuff along with some other things that are repeated could benefit the story.
You provide a reason for why Gwen says things like this later in the story, but when Christy finally mentions it, I think it comes to late since I stopped caring for Gwen by the time this was revealed. I found Sam's reaction to Gwen's gangbang rape:
"Poor kid."
to be disingenuous from a person who just had group sex with her.
When I started reading your story I was expecting an event story and not a character story. I'm not a fan of character stories for the most part so I complained when I didn't see problems thrown out that would later be resolved somehow. At the end of the story I'm left with a character study where I didn't care much for the women and felt the guys were well done, but didn't like how they could just walk away from everything and move on to the next chapter leaving so many loose ends. This is probably how things happen in RL, but I'm a romance story fan and find it unpleasant when something like this happens.
You did a nice job making the male characters interesting which is nice, but I would have preferred to see one of the woman character's be interesting as well.
Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive, but Gwen comes across to me as a flake and one can't blame the guys for wanting to get away from her after her demanding sex requirements begin to wear thin, as they do by the end of the story (or maybe earlier). Her need to have a group situation with the guys and their exit left me with some unresolved issues, but since I didn't care for Gwen by the end of the story, it didn't matter all that much.
Christy is the other chance for an interesting woman character, but in her case, she seems to me to be a sperm receptacle and a mechanism to quickly explain away certain things in the story. She tells us that the reason Gwen is the way she is has to do with her being gangbanged and other stuff that appear designed more to tie up loose ends than to paint an interesting character picture. This information comes to late for me since I stopped liking Gwen by the time I knew her problem and found myself saying, "So what" when I got the news. I have no picture of Christy as I do with the other characters in your story. I think you could have done more with her.
My thinking is that you do a great job developing the male characters in the story and I can see that they are off to star in other stories in this series. They don't come across as having any real sensitivity to women which is okay with me because this is realistic and something worth exploring. Your women could be better. I would suggest that instead of having a Gwen character that makes it easy to understand why they hit the road again, you might come up with a more sympathetic character so the reader has a reason to question their decisions. I hate black and white in stories and love it when gray areas make choices difficult. It is more interesting for me to read a story where no matter what happens a case could be made for an alternative ending. I would hope you'd avoid a Christy character in the future and instead of having someone take the stage to explain the others characters, you let them do it themselves in some interesting way.
No doubt all of this is coming from a woman's point of view and I might feel very different if I read the story from a male perspective. I'm quite interested in finding out what guys think of the ending.
It's Me! Katie McN
<[email protected]>
Read My Stories at:
www.katie-mcn.com
From: john
Re: Denver Gwen (part 2), by Poison Ivan
Date: 10 Feb 2003 22:33:47 -0800
Irony and sex don't mix so well.
The way I see the plot: Two drifters have their way with women and continue drifting in search of what? America? more likely their own pleasure. They learn no great lessons "on their road," suffer no great harm, inflict some pain, create "memories" that one would hope, but in no way anticipate, under more sober conditions they'd find embarrassing at the least. In spite of their bravado, I find it hard to believe they find much pleasure either. In that context, it's hard to find their sex erotic. It reminded me less of Kerouac, more of another road, one on which the characters search endlessly for a Godot that isn't going to appear.
It's bitter. Alarmingly well written. Seductive as the lemon, a great symbol for the story. Something of the 60's has been captured. Drugs, then, we thought a pathway to some freedom. Forty years have taught us something else. It's no longer cool to screw chicks too drunk to know what they are doing. Pulling out is not the safest kind of sex. Passed-out people, nowadays, sometimes don't wake up. This is as tough a story as I have read on here. I'm grateful, Ivan, even if you think I've read it upside down and backwards.
Improvements? I'm too drained to really care. Don't worry about bogging down, though. An irony can bog. It's almost an essential part of that mythos. It adds, rather than detracts, the way you do it.
Thank you, not just for sharing, but for writing ... John
From: PleaseCain
Re: Denver Gwen (part 2), by Poison Ivan
Date: 13 Feb 2003 19:21:19 GMT
The writing is lively and pungent. I was getting great snapshots in my mind. There were a couple of bumps that momentarily jolted me out of the story:
- the various names for genitalia, like pud, cooze and poon, in addition to all the standard ones, where they start sounding like a novelty nicknames. This is probably just a function of attempting to keep a long story fresh, and not a bad job at that!
- a couple of the metaphors strained: her body being red as a boiled lobster is fine, maybe a little overstated, but it works. But then it's followed with Sam feeling like his penis is submerged in boiling oil, which stopped me.
But all in all, it's good work, and I'm just mentioning a few particulars for you to consider changing. For me, this second half was a better read than last week's. The conclusion is anticlimactic, but fits the story, if it's one of the series, that is.
One final point I was going to mention last week, but didn't want to sound pretentious - and besides, I had already used up my time. It didn't surprise me last week that Katie (in an excellent post, by the way) and then you invoked On the Road, because I couldn't get away from it reading the first half of this. Neil is manic and uninhibited like Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady (Dean, like Neil, first appears in the story brazenly naked), but with a tilt toward Animal House. Sam works fine as Sal Paradise, the brainy journalist-participant. I understand the close parallels are intentional, but for me, they detracted from the story, especially in part one. Don't get me wrong, you did a great job with this project, but I wonder if you should further differentiate your characters from Kerouac's, which have, after all, been done. Just one reader's thoughts.
Thank you for being so generous with your stories as contributions.
Best,
Cain
From: Tesseract
Re: Denver Gwen (part 2), by Poison Ivan
Date: 15 Feb 2003 00:45:37 -0800
"Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]> ...
*********************************** "Denver Gwen" part 2 (MF MMF oral anal) By Poison Ivan [email protected]
I've seen this movie before, often as an adventure, sometimes as a comedy, occasionally as a tragedy. It's a road movie, and the genre predates Kerouac, which (my loss) I haven't read.
The dudes blow into town, creating mayhem, doing some good, doing some harm, and leave as unencumbered as they arrived.
You did an interesting sexual take on it and it is written well enough that I could actually see the action.
I noticed the first part was a lot more sexual than the second. Even though it only had one fuck scene it had a lot more sex play. The second part had more fuck scenes but, except for the first menage a trois, they weren't as sexy and the whole part had a more cerebral feel.
The ending, while not the happiest, fits the boys' character.
Last week I neglected to mention that Neil, as strong and out going as he is, is emotionally vulnerable. He wears his heart on his sleeve and depends on Sam to protect him. It is even more evident here.
"Follow me," I said. "I'll show you the way."
That perfectly defines their relationship but it works in either direction: Neil showing the way into the new and unknown; Sam showing the way back to safety.
Katie did a good job of covering any technical problems I saw, and several that I didn't see, though I did see one typo:
{A s/b I} felt a wave of revulsion, a sour taste rising from my stomach.
Overall a good story and I'm glad I read it.
Tesseract
Note that all the comments archived here were culled from active discussions occuring in the Usenet newsgroup alt.sex.stories.d. If you want to contribute to the discussion, please join us in ASSD and say your piece. Everyone is welcome.
If you do not know how to read Usenet newsgroups, there is a nice, free web interface on Google: http://groups.google.com/. If you have any problems, send us email. If we're lucky, we'll get you set up and contributing in no time!
If you have not done so, please read the Comment Guidelines. We ask that all comments include two positive remarks and two suggestions for improvement. Please, try not to repeat!
From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: Denver Gwen (part 2), by Poison Ivan
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 12:30:13 -0600
On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 08:33:06 -0500, "Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote:
I like happy endings, so the plot bugs me a bit. Yet on the other hand part of that is being too close to my RL experiences, and I guess we can all have wishes that things would have worked out better, especially better goodbyes.
Really nice postive is the active sex. Everything feels like it should work, and it isn't all clinical or body parts interacting.
I like Gwen's character too. I feel for her situation, and sympathize with it. She comes to terms with being a "slut" - or as some of us might put it, a woman comfortable with her sexuality. She isn't perfect, because she equates good sex partners with good lifetime partners (which I think could be the case, if the guys were ready for it).
Since I'm paying more attention to plot than details here, I don't think that there is much place for suggestions to improve it. The way things end is right, not in the sense of being the best thing to do, but in fitting the characters. Except that just maybe, Sam can't help wondering, especially on lonely nights, what if they'd stayed a while longer?
Every story needs something special to hang it all on. I think that this last line says it all. We don't know if Sam and Neil found something together, but they had their own over and over things they did, didn't they?
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.